Biglaw Gender Discrimination Case Gets To Name Calling Phase

This legal battle is getting personal.

Traci Ribeiro.

Traci Ribeiro

When a partner sues her Biglaw firm, things are bound to get messy. Traci Ribeiro, an insurance partner in Sedgwick’s Chicago office, filed a lawsuit against the firm alleging that female partners and associates were not compensated at the same levels as their male counterparts and that there was a gender-biased and paternalistic environment at the firm.

This week, Sedgwick filed a motion to compel arbitration, and the filing — well, what hasn’t been redacted — teems with anger calling the plaintiff and the lawsuit “self-serving,” “quisling,” and “disingenuous.” Now, can we just talk for a second about the word quisling? They could have used the word traitor or the more common “Benedict Arnold,” but no. Like an unlikable nerd that can’t help but awkwardly insert the SAT words he spent all summer learning into conversation, the firm went with the nickel word that originates with a Norwegian Nazi collaborator.

Ribeiro’s lawyers have swung back at the attacks:

“Sedgwick’s personal attacks characterizing Ribeiro as ‘traitorous’ or deceitful confirm the retaliatory motives that she alleges,” said J. Bryan Wood, Ribeiro’s attorney from The Wood Law Office, LLC in Chicago. “Sedgwick is fighting, mischaracterizing, and slurring a successful attorney at its firm who chose to exercise her right to challenge pay discrimination. Labelling Ribeiro a ‘quisling’ or traitor shows Sedgwick does not value women’s voices in their Equity Partnership or at the firm or care about the issue of pay equity,” he added.

And this classic line gets deployed with aplomb:

“Lawyers who resort to personal attacks usually lack better arguments,” added Sharon Vinick of Oakland’s Levy Vinick Burrell Hyams LLP. “That’s true here.”

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Sounds like there is a lot of vitriol on both sides, so that’ll make for fascinating filings.

(Read the entire response on the next page.)

Earlier: Biglaw Partner Files Class Action Lawsuit Over ‘Male-Dominated Culture’

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